Traditionally, musical instruments such as the recorder have been used as an introductory musical instrument typically for children from ages 3 to 8 to develop their musicality. Whilst introductory musical instruments such as the recorder have been well received in early music education, it is difficult for a child's finger to fully cover and seal a tone hole of an instrument such as the recorder given that a child's finger may typically be as little as 5 mm across (as opposed to 20 mm for a fully grown adult) whereas the tone hole of the musical instrument to be covered may be at least 6 mm in diameter or larger. Accordingly, as a child may not be able to accurately position his finger over and seal the tone hole, the recorder will produce an unpleasant “screeching” sound having an incorrect pitch. This may also cause frustration for the child and the teacher and may vastly compromise the child's musical learning experience.
In seeking to alleviate this problem, certain existing instruments include tone holes with reduced size so as to enable a child's finger to more accurately cover and seal the tone hole. However, the reduced tone hole diameter results in a relatively “muted” tone which is perceived to lack desirable tone resonance and tone projection quality. The reduction in the tone hole size may also require repositioning of the tone hole in order to maintain the correct pitch. However, this may compromise the instrument ergonomically because a child may need to stretch or contort the natural positioning of his/her fingers on the instrument making it more difficult to play.